How an AI Anime Is Created | Hacker News Reader

How an AI Anime Is Created

aventos.dev

30 pointsJimsonYang45 comments

The end result[1] looks quite impressive! The animation feels like it's quite high quality--very smooth. However, some things seem off: bad lip sync, minor animation errors, discontinuous scene-to-scene feel. Given that these are supposed to be their best examples, meant as advertisements, I would guess these errors are hard to fix using only the models.

So my verdict is that AI-only anime is still not there yet (although it would be cool to have a world where one dedicated and talented artist could make a high quality anime). But at the same time, anime studios will probably start incorporating AI into their workflow, getting high-quality-looking scenes for very cheap.

[1] https://www.aventos.dev/our-work

As the quality of each scene might someday surpass the budget of entire shows, anime can be infinitely more animated and creating something new in the process. What would a “multi-billion-dollar” episode look like? Hope we find out soon. Exciting times.

The problem with ai is that it's extremely good at front loading everything. Sure it can make a scene, but can it make 20 scenes that are coherent? Can it follow human prompt for story? Or do you prompt and hope the result is like you wanted? Which leads to inevitably settling for something you did not.

That’s true today: none of those requirements can be fulfilled.

Art direction and coherence might not be that far away as those are highly desired features, but it certainly looks like that now.

It's weird how consistent the 'ai art style' is for each medium. You really only need a glance at the right frame in these to know immediately. (https://www.aventos.dev/our-work) Not looking for errors or anything, just style. The ramen one is markedly subtler about it than the others at least. I always assumed this was due to people using 'default' styling by not specifying anything in particular, but these people claim to have a pretty in-depth process that presumably would nudge away from that. When I look at old pictures of dall-e 2 or midjourney v3, the hands are all mangled and stuff, but they're not in the 'ai style'.

As Hayao Miyazaki put it, it's "an insult to life itself"

The characters on those video resemble alot certain mainstream works, isn't this very problematic?

The vast majority of anime has a very similar style, which is why it's immediately recognisable as such; AI has picked an average of that.

The majority of anime, at least the Japanese ones, do resemble each other a lot at times, but the AI anime style resembles none of them. It has this distinct style that makes it recognizable as AI art. It is more similar to the style used in illustrations, like the ones you see in many gacha games. And the same style is used even for AI generated comics and illustrations. I think that was the grandparent poster was trying to say when writing "consistent in every medium".

That said, AI is pretty good for creating goofy stuff that otherwise won't sell to the mainstream audiences. My recent favourite AI anime is Chemical Cooker Ryo.

> One, fans here actually get to make anime in the US. Instead of needing to fly to Japan, speak Japanese, and preferably be Japanese to break into the industry.

Does this come off as wildly tone deaf to anybody else? "We love your product and what you do, but could we get it without associating with or paying you in any way?"

> ...Smaller and faster means more financially feasible so we can give better wages for artists and enable a new industry to thrive in the US.

I've been in Asia this week, speaking to artists and creators. The traditional systems do create challenges, but this just sounds like a U.S. AI-based company giving itself carte blanche to steal the cultural output of another country, wrap it up in and U.S. style business, and eventually push existing artists or long standing studios out of the space.

No, I don't think I want a smaller team of artists and animation professionals doing art and animation. That feels like a very sloppy outlook to me.

[Edit: While I'm sure the process is interesting for some, the introduction especially just leaves me wondering who thought this writing sounded good? Maybe the target market for this is AI investors or people who aren't actually interested in the artistic part of things, and that's why I find it such a turn-off.

E.g. "We could license good music," implying their music is bad? Maybe it would be less jarring if they didn't specifically call out the importance of writing?]

> Does this come off as wildly tone deaf to anybody else? "We love your product and what you do, but could we get it without associating with or paying you in any way?"

Like Japan with cars, electronics, etc?

While there are valid complaints about animation production, I don't see any real comparison between the arts and broad manufacturing segments, especially when discussing arts tied so strongly to a particular regions and artists. I'm also not sure how your statement relates to this particular article and what they've written.

Would you please expand on that line of thinking?

I have seen a few samples of AI anime, and it is impressive how far the technology has come; the only thing that really stands out are the cuts every few seconds, because video generation currently can't produce anything longer. However it's definitely enough to tell a story, particularly one that's nearly 100% fast-paced fighting scenes.

A clip going for a few seconds is probably faster than a human, who can only hand draw one frame at a time

They mean how long a single continuous and contiguous scene is when played back, not how long it takes make the scene.

Honestly these look pretty good, I think run-of-the-mill anime is a strong target since it's highly formulaic and one of the more stylistically derivative genres.

I don't think this tech is quite "full length movie" watchable yet (maybe other uses), but seems only a matter of time where it would be "good enough" for common use.

"Better pay for artists" by replacing as much art production as possible with AI prompting is the most insane canard I've heard in a long time.

The whole "AI is trash at writing (my job), but for the audio/visual stuff (their job) it's a great cost-saver!" thing is just...beneath contempt.

Goes to show human review doesn't amount to anything if the reviewer is blind to the flaws they're supposed to catch, whether they're going over video gens or a self-aggrandizing puff piece.

Indeed. Is there a word or phrase where the outcome of your actions is the exact opposite of your stated goal or motivation?

Closest I can think of is destroying the village to save it, and I think that's very much the territory we're in here.

This does not look good. The animation is weird. Why does it look like they do a few small frames of motion, then a hard stop to create the low FPS feel of anime. It feels really off. Anime already has an issue of low effort production, I'd argue there is an over saturation at the moment. AI isn't going to help tell a new or better story, but it will help churn out mediocre content faster.

> [we did this so anime production companies would] pay the employees(artists) better

I mean, has pay gone up in other fields where AI has taken over a lot of jobs?

In any case, I think the reason pay is awful in anime is the same reason as in gamedev: if people get into it for passion, the companies can pay less and still have employees.

> I think the reason pay is awful in anime is the same reason as in gamedev: if people get into it for passion, the companies can pay less and still have employees

Partially, but also outsourcing. First it was South Korea, then China, and now Vietnam and India.

Toei Animation's (Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sailor Moon, Mononoke) VISION 2030 [0] is interesting if you want to deep dive into how the industry is thinking medium-to-long terms

> has pay gone up in other fields where AI has taken over a lot of job

Depends on the industry [1]

[0] - https://corp.toei-anim.co.jp/en/ir/main/00/teaserItems1/0112...

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/ai-impacts-in-bls-employme...

I have to admit that people interpreting current affairs/hot moments in real life through the lens of anime tropes really tickles in a way I never believed possible.

The aha moment was when people made ones over the Pam Bondi DOW over 50k meme but the recent World Cup ones have been very amusing too

> When we choose a story, or write one ourselves, we always have to think about the consumer.

I really am getting to a point with this stuff that all I can say is "OK".

I don't think people will ever be fans of aventos or the media it throws out to the world. Calling the people looking to enjoy something you made "consumers" might be one thing to change, but fundementally you've stripped away everything interesting about yourselves as artists. I have no argument that will be convincing to you, but I just can't imagine anyone caring too deeply. I hope you enjoy doing this for your own sake and good luck with whatever.

1. Theft

  - Akira Yoshida, Marvel

Pretty cool overview of the process even if I would rather claw my eyes out than view the result.

https://www.aventos.dev/our-work

dunno, I've seen worse and some of the scenes if you asked me if it was AI or not I probably couldn't tell you. most egregious thing I saw was at the 27 second mark where the girl is inside the table.

At the current level of tech it feels like it would be a pretty dull full length Anime, and hard to squeeze all the bugs out but for something shorter like a commercial or FMVs for like a video game seems good enough.

I see people trying to make 5 - 10 minute clips of 80s anime inspired stuff, and it usually looks fine as a still, but when things move its off and when scenes change theres a vast inconsistency with previous scenes. I tend to block most of these creators even tho I should really be in the target audience.

0:19 - the bowl has soup in it, despite coming from the middle of the stack.

0:19 - [same time] several bowls are just sloppified, e.g., having two bottoms

0:45 - last of the soup phases out the bottom of the bowl

Continuity errors with the smock. (Is there a logo on the pocket, or no? Does it have a pocket?)

("How Asians Pay for the Bill" … what a title)

0:29 - a water drop drops off the ice cube and falls to the next ice cube … inside the water?

The cards are never quite the same; sometime the contacts are misplaced, sometimes they're missing.

But things like the girl phasing in the table, the soup phasing through the bowl … these are things a human would never animate, because they've lived their entire life understanding the physics of soup. Or, like with the card … they'd get a reference.

I watched the whole thing and didn’t notice anything off, other than soup moving a bit weirdly. But if no one had told me it was AI, then I’d think that’s just the animation style. Then I read the list of tells and oh ok, now I can see a little of it if I pause at just the right time and replay it a few times. But who watches anime like that? I think it’s good enough for the vast majority of people, who would enjoy it at first, then later find out it’s AI, and hate it because that’s the cool thing to do.

So, yes, some of this I'd've missed if I hadn't been combing over it quite as finely. But not all of it.

But in particular, the cut of the bowl stack being spilled … that scene in particular makes no sense. The entire physics of it should feel wrong because they are wrong. In the same way that CGI animations and/or games get more realistic looking the closer they simulate physics, so too does animation: if a character drops a bowl (in a setting with gravity), then it must act so, and animators know this and render it as such. Yes, and AI will try to predict it, but it strikes me akin to trying to perform a computation in screen space that must be performed in 3D space.

The soup also feels wrong, and it only takes a second rewatch to determine why; the shot feels non-committal, because it is: are we ladling, are we pouring, is the soup phasing out the bottom?

The best animators out there, to me, reward you for watching harder. Small things that make sense in the context of what you're seeing, but aren't necessary. The more you look, the more detail there is to the scene. I'd offer Frieren as an example here. For example, in E21 (the episode where Frieren breaks the barrier during the test): the episode starts when Flamme brings Frieren before Serie; this occurs hundreds, if not more than a millennia, prior to the main events. We see Serie in a temple. Later, when Frieren breaks the barrier, we see Serie remark: "This is why I will never retire."; the same temple, but now the walls are worn with time. This is made somewhat apparent, as there's a fade to denote the passage of the time. (Less apparent is there is allegedly a one or two frame shot of Serie, whose barrier it is, overlaid in the spell Frieren casts to break it. It's visible if you watch it, but not really intelligible.) As another example, the timeskip in E1 has her visiting the same shop twice, and the aging of the shop keeper & shop is visible. It's not just the same shop, it's from the same angle, specifically so that we the viewer can understand it to be the same shop. It's not required for the plot, but it builds out a richer story. As a final example, E17, Fern comes in from the cold & touches Stark on the face ("You're a monster!", Stark screams.) Later, when Fern falls ill, Stark tries to wake Frieren, who is by this point notorious for sleeping too long. Stark wakes her by touching her face, to which Frieren responds, "You're a monster." (Honestly Frieren is one of those animes that's probably so littered with these things that I'm missing like 80% of them.) But good animations make detailed choices all the way down to that level: as far as the plot cares, Stark only needs to wake Frieren, but he wakes her in the particular way that makes sense for the character we've built.

But in AI pieces, the detail is just never there, because when it's "wall in background", there's so many walls, in so many backgrounds, all muddled up in the training data.

Frieren's earrings are actually somewhat similar to the smock comment: her earrings are visually consistent throughout the entire anime, not merely a few shots. (Again, this is an example that's rich in detail, too: chronologically earlier shots of Frieren notably lack the earrings, which is made possible to notice by their consistency & distinctiveness when they're present in the first place. We're probably to presume she acquires them at some yet unrevealed point, and the visual similarity to her teacher Flamme's jewelery also leaves the viewer to wonder if they're related. But it's that choice, that these two sets of accessories appear similar, that allows us to build that connection. It's also the sort of thing that leaves me wondering "how long were the writers planning?!")

(I'd also offer the soundtrack as something that I don't know that AI can ever reach. The song "Knife to the Throat" gives me chills if I play it in my mind. But it's harder to demonstrate detail and thematic elements in a musical piece, I think. An a musical example, I'd offer "Pink Pony Club": the opening notes to which are a musical allusion to "I Will Survive". The notes are chosen intentionally, as a specific reference (one thematically relevant to the song), to set a specific tone and setting for the song that is to come, and you need to know the reference and the history and context it exists in, to be able to appreciate it.)

Thanks for the reply and the example. When I used to watch anime I always sped through it wanting to get to the story/action. I had assumed people combing through frame by frame were just looking for excuses to label it as AI. But now I can appreciate doing it for a lovingly-crafted anime to savor the details, and being disappointed when the they're not there or hallucinated/inconsistent due to AI. It's the same reason I avoid any music that is AI-generated, despite being fooled at a cursory listen. I don't want to waste my time if I dive in deeper and find out there's nothing there.

My in-laws from China are visiting and now they're both watching these AI-generated micro-dramas. Lots of weird shiny people with perfect faces and bodies, and overly dramatic yelling/crying. Much worse quality than the anime clips featured in this post. They know it's AI and don't care. I'm afraid that if the majority of people reward slop, that's what everyone's going to get.

>But now I can appreciate doing it for a lovingly-crafted anime to savor the details, and being disappointed when the they're not there or hallucinated/inconsistent due to AI. It's the same reason I avoid any music that is AI-generated, despite being fooled at a cursory listen.

What gets me is that, as the amazing generation of technical animators have retired, anime has gotten less and less interesting fine detail.

AI threatens to bring that detail back, but make it wacky and crazy. And I honestly dont know which way is worse.

The eagle is flying in one direction and then the opposite by morphing the back into the front.

One consistent tell is in hair. The most obvious manifestation is how long hair splits and merges back into itself (as at 0:27).

AI hair often doesn't follow proper "form" and looks like overcomplicated, random tufts that can clash and overlap. It might not be obvious on a first glance, but you can learn to tell the difference pretty quickly.

I wonder if it would be better to work on models thst can produce the 3D scenes in Blender that can be rendered to an anime style. That technique is already common, but if you could get AI to generate it in that format you could more easily ammend issues in the output or more easily add artistic direction, detail and the human touch.

Agree 100%, once you get things into 3D with a camera the possibilities open up, and it's very on-trend anyway.

Family Guy's Korea team famously did this early on. So did some major animes like Trigun (surprisingly early).

With Genshin Impact / Honkai Star Rail, I think the trend of "anime in 3D" is only intensifying anyway, and that's totally aside from your mentioned use case of just making it easier to automate shots and transitions to perfect fidelity without AI artifacting.

I must admit, the short sample for “How Asians Pay the Bill” was kinda fun :)

Thank you, its unfortunate that it performed terribly on social media, otherwise I wouldve loved to continue making this sort of content

Oh well back to making 'I got isekaid to a medival time period with a cheat skill and harem'

Frankly, it sounds like you are being a bit short-sighted with the whole endeavour.

The lowered production costs enabled by AI should to a degree insulate you from the usual financial risks, and should allow you to be more authentic. It might seem risky to make niche content, but I think it could help attract a real initial audience, never underestimate the demand for true authenticity.

It might sound strange talking about authenticity when it comes to AI, but I do agree with your perspective, that it can empower creative thinkers to produce content with real authorial intent directly, and without the compromises inherent to large production teams.

You seem to be operating like a corporate production company with large costs that needs to appeal to the lowest common denominator to get ROI, but you are doing it without the benefits of the higher production budgets.

You are wasting your advantage. Do the things they cannot afford to do because they are too risky or too niche. If you say that AI allows you to empower your writers, don't waste their talents on brainless content!

Looks good enough. I don't get the delulu looks weird takes. AI anime, is visually better on many metrics than celluloid labour of love hand crafted art from 20-30 years ago. That's just reality, humans with shit / laborious tools could creat excellence with enough $$$ back in they day, but most average work was crayon scribbling content tier. 4min mile is faster than 7min mile. If a bunch of art hackfrauds have good enough script and prompting skills to churn their ideas into something watchable, then great. Extra great if talented inbetweeners get to be animation director with a few dollars in silicon instead waiting on animation sweat shops.

I'd love to make an erotic anime.

This is pretty cool. I could see a future where these kinds of techniques become the norm, and the role of "animator" becomes less about hand drawing animations and more stylistic and taste choices, with I guess the occasional involvement by hand to get the exact result the animator wants. Still, the boundary between art and slop is super fine here.

Considering how similar the output of a model is, artists are going to still have to do most of the work, if they want a style over the template the model is trained on.

Artists also enjoy creating and the process of creation.

What I love about this post showing is that it admits up front that the quality of a given entertainment medium is in the writing.

Staff writers are not respected and treated as less than in Hollywood.

Yet the classics of any given medium have emotionally resonating entertainment medium have unique or paradigm-shifting results on audiences, and the medium itself (novel, comic book, TV show, miniseries, film, video game) has influence, but ultimately, it's the writing that is the single most important element of an entertainment IP's value.

An entertainment product that makes you feel emotions beyond boredom is doing its job. True crime/horror bring emotions of fear, mystery, and danger. Sci-Fi/Fantasy bring wonder, curiosity, and discovery, with genre-specific forms of each of those emotions. Mysteries and thrillers bring, well, mysteries and thrills.

So a slice of life AI anime, if it can properly portray from its writing a sense of growing mutual trust, awkwardness of growing up, combined with hope for a better tomorrow, it will have done its job as an entertainment product.

I'm procrastinating working on a fantasy novel which I started in 2012 and need to finish it. It has to hold up in today's neon flashing lights tiktok world as a book. But then there's no reason I couldn't use AI tools to direct adaptations of the source material to an anime or manga or TV show or web series.

Do I wish I could hire and pay and create an anime with a dedicated studio of practitioners who are pros and passionate about the medium beyond my wildest dreams? Sure! Is that likely to happen in 100 million lifetimes? Nope! So if I want to have my IP appear as an anime or TV show, my only realistic option with my one life on earth would be to try to do a similar process to how this animation studio works.

Bravo for them for advancing the medium for this, to find what works and what doesn't. Maybe some day if I will just finish my actual novel and get it eviscerated, after I've figured out how much it will take to pay Michael Kramer and Kate Reading to do an audiobook for it, I can find wild business success such that I could commission an anime series for the IP as my creative vision directs, and have humans do the interesting parts, and let the AIs do the boring inbetweens and tedium work.

But until then, I'll be keeping an eye on aventos to see where they go with this potential.

More tasteless business bros completely missing the point of art. Fitting that they centered the text on this page.

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